


Heart Like a Wheel

by Anonymous



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-10
Updated: 2009-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'I think,' Bran said, chewing on a piece of grass, legs flung over a rise of rock, 'that you should amuse me, dewin. I think you should tell me a story.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Like a Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Written for astrophelstella in the 2008 New Year's Resolution Challenge. Posted for [14 Valentines](http://community.livejournal.com/14valentines/106640.html).

"I think," Bran said, chewing on a piece of grass, legs flung over a rise of rock, "that you should amuse me, _dewin_. I think you should tell me a story."

Will shook his head and bit into an apple. "Shut up, Bran," he said through his mouthful. "It's too nice a day for stories." It was, too, the air blue at the edges of one's vision and the shadows crisp and black. It was not that beauty was so rare in Wales, but this kind of clear horizon was, and Will found that he was surprised by the intensity of his longing for the more usual softened, blurry world of Cumbria. There was too much to see in the light, all at once, none of which he was certain he was permitted to watch.

"What, they're only to be told on dark and stormy nights? Piss off, Will, and tell a story."

It was hard to resist Bran, ever, and especially so when given a direct command, but Will managed.

"No," he repeated, and swallowed. The apple juice stung a cut on the inside of his lip, acquired stumbling whilst chasing Bran down the field the other day, and he pressed his tongue to the sore point. It wasn't the pleasure-pain of picking at a scab, it was just a sharp ache in the midst of tender flesh, a sudden reminder of the fragility of the body, that snug, breakable sheath for the soul. The sharp, remembered taste of blood had not been unpleasant, intruding into the usual ordered world of summer holidays, acquired as it had been in such a familiar way, such a proper way; following Bran, no matter where he led.

Bran was propped on his elbows, hand brushing over the long stalks of grass, the picnic bag lying between them. The canvas bag had been spread out to serve as a table for the bacon sarnies Aunt Jen had pressed on them as they left the Evans's early that morning, and a few insects industriously investigated the few crumbs they had left behind. "All right, then," Bran said. "I won't ask again if you'll tell me why not."

"It's a wonder your teachers aren't trying to turn you into a solicitor, with that bent of mind," Will said mildly. Bran's teachers in Cardiff had, once they had gotten over the shock of the country albino boy who talked back, been trying assiduously to turn him into a medico; but Bran had written mockingly of their efforts, his letters carrying a bit of scorn tucked in between the punctuation. He was, Will knew, meant for greater things than splinting broken wrists and administering cod-liver oil. That knowledge, bone and blood and breath deep, did not mean that Will was any the surer what those greater things would be; but they were waiting for Bran. Of that he was certain.

He turned his head to see Bran watching him, a faint smirk on his face.

"Because—because there is no happily-ever-after, all right?" He rolled over and put his chin in his hands. The pale sunshine washed his face and he squinted toward Bran. "I know what came _after_ the ever after, and it was never happy."

"Not once, in all of human history, or before," Bran said, his brows arching above his dark glasses, "has any story ended well?"

"_Well_, yes. They ended as they ended, and that is ending well." Will closed his eyes and tried not to see Hawkin's snarling face slacken on the backs of his eyelids; the memory had faded and become bleached of color over the years, but it was still more vivid than many other things he had experienced.

"You mean they died." Bran's voice was casual, and when Will opened his eyes to look at him, he saw that Bran was spinning a dead leaf between his thumb and forefinger.

It was odd, how such a gesture could recall memories that had never happened but could have, would have if Bran had not made his choice as he had: Bran lying, sprawled full-length on a mountainside, twirling a leaf between his fingers, but instead of hiding his raven's eyes behind smoked glass, they were glowing against his skin, framed by creases, and made all the more vivid by the mud smudged on his cheekbone and temple. "Stories are about humans," Will said absently, as he chased the memory down arched corridors of possibility. "Humans die." Bran sat up and stared at him. "What?" Will said, the weight of Bran's gaze making him look up from his hands, which he had been staring at. Bran shook his head. "_What_?" he repeated, unnerved now.

Bran bit into another apple. "Sometimes," he said through his mouthful, "I forget, that's all. I call you _dewin_, and it seems no more than any ordinary nickname, like calling Jane, oh, Janey, or your cousin Rhys — well, no one would nickname Rhys, would they?' He flicked a smile, brief as morning mist, and added, "But then you come out and say something like that, and I remember all over again."

Will lifted a hand helplessly. "I—I'm sorry?" he tried.

"Don't be," Bran said, tossing his apple core over his shoulder, "You only do it around me. You're not careless. Even if you were, would it matter?" Will shrugged uncomfortably. "Jane and Barney and Simon—" Bran said, somehow exaggerating the Welshness of the vowels so that they sounded new and ancient, all at once. "They're—"

Somewhere behind a clump of bent trees, a dog barked—chasing butterflies, probably. "They," Will said firmly, "Are what they have always been. Good friends."

"And I?"

"You," he repeated, "are what you have always been. Yourself." Bran shifted restlessly, and Will swallowed. Bran had never asked why Will had said _cofiwch, cofiwch_ to him, putting the full weight of his power behind it, and Will had never explained, not wanting to revisit, even in description, the diminishment that that had been visible in Bran's smallest movement. Forgetting was all well and good for ordinary people (although no one is ever ordinary; each person has untapped wondrous qualities, for the Dark and the Light), but it had not been mere forgetting for Bran; it had been something far more terrible, more overarching, and Will did not care to put a name to it.

Bran had lost enough, and Will was not keen to take anything from him that he did not restore, afterwards.

"Ah, Will," Bran said, after glancing quickly over toward the distant, invisible sheepdog, "I don't think you're right, _dewin_ though you are."

Will raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" he said, and there was something of Merriman in his tone. He could hear it, and could not quite regret it.

"Just because humans die doesn't mean that's the story," Bran said, staring fixedly to the west, where light was beginning to shatter over the heaped grey stones of the mountains. "Just because children grow up, we think that that is a child's _purpose_, to grow up. A child knows perfectly well that its purpose is to be a child."

Will pulled out a stalk of grass and began twisting it into knots. "Sometimes," he said, "I forget."

"That's why you have me," Bran said fondly. He reached out a hand and rested it on Will's shoulder, but Will shook his head.

He turned his head to brush his mouth against Bran's knuckles. "No," he murmured. "You have me." Bran's answering smile was sharp as the rock pressing into Will's side, and he gave way, reaching up and gripping the back of Bran's neck. "You've always had me," he said.

Bran nodded, accepting the statement as his due, and leaned forward to press his dry lips to Will's forehead. "And always shall," he said.


End file.
